Metacognition, Critical Thinking, Gender as Predictors of Achievement of 10th Graders in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematic School (STEM)

The purpose of this study was to examine how gender , metacognition and critical thinking contributed to the achievement of 10th graders in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematic .school (STEM), Cairo. Achievement was measured in terms of overall grade point averages. A number of T-Tests were conducted to examine if gender significantly influenced academic achievement in Arabic Language, metacognitive skills, and critical thinking skills. The –values did not reach significance level. This indicates that there is no effect of gender on academic achievement in Science, metacognitive skills, and critical thinking skills. There was a significant positive relationship between metacognitive skills and academic achievement in Science (r=.234 p < .01), between critical thinking skills and academic achievement in Science (r=.334 p < .01), and between metacognitive skills critical thinking skills (r=.502 p < .01). A regression analysis was performed using achievement as the dependent variable and gender, metacognition, and critical thinking as the independent variables. The analysis indicated that students' critical thinking skills significantly account for differences in their academic achievement ß = .355, p < .001 , metacognition significantly account for differences in their academic achievement ß = .455, p < .001 , while gender ß = .072, p < .05 did not significantly account for students' achievement